Piecing Together Yorktown's Past

Archaeologists Find Evidence Of Pre-revolutionary Slave Site

YORK — Archaeologists digging near Main Street have uncovered shells and glass beads that may document the extent of the slave community in pre-Revolutionary War Yorktown.

The diggers have also found simple ceramics that indicate less-than-wealthy Yorktown residents lived or worked above the bluff overlooking the York River.

"That gives us hope that we are delving into some sort of slave site," said Garrett Fesler, site supervisor for the Yorktown Archaeological Trust.

The trust, affiliated with the James River Institute for Archaeology, began digging in February on Yorktown land that will eventually hold 16 expensive homes and a commercial development in the style of Williamsburg's Merchants Square.

Yorktown was a major slave-trading port, but historians have thought the slave presence was confined to sites closer to the docks on the York River, said Nicholas Luccketti, director of the trust.

Luccketti and his colleagues have found about 80 cowry shells, which were used in Africa and elsewhere as money or status-symbol decoration for clothing.

"Cowries are historically associated with blacks in the Colonial period, but they have not been found in large quantities elsewhere," Luccketti said.

"Their presence here is very exciting because slaves didn't have too many material goods that we can find in the ground 200 years later."

The diggers have not discovered exact evidence of a residence on the bluff - Luccketti thinks its foundation is under the York Town Crier building - but evidence of smaller buildings and artifacts typically found in a Colonial back yard have been unearthed.

"It is a great site," said Fesler, standing knee-deep in one of many pits the archaeologists have dug.

"This is a window into Yorktown that hasn't been disturbed by the battles that took place here," Fesler said. "We tend to forget that Yorktown was a very important port city before the Revolution."

A few inches below the surface "there are tremendously interesting 18th-century artifacts next to Miller beer cans."

The diggers have found keys, pieces of wine glasses, buttons, pins, nails and lead used to build Colonial window frames.

More unusual items include a 17th-century door lock with a key broken inside it, a gun tool used to sharpen and replace flints, and casts for ammunition.

"They were probably making their own gunshot by the fireplace for hunting," said David Harvey, who, as conservator for the trust, cleans and preserves the artifacts.

Diggers have also found a glass monogram initialed "BH" that once was attached to a Colonial wine bottle, said Bly Straube, the trust's curator.

"It was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries for the gentry to order personalized wine bottles from England," she explained.

The diggers have also found ceramics probably made by William Rogers, "the `poor' potter of Yorktown," Straube said. Rogers is sarcastically called "poor" because he somehow circumvented Great Britain's prohibition against producing finished goods in the colonies and became wealthy.

The archaeologists are beginning to search a pre-Revolution well they hope will produce the best artifacts from the project.

"Wells are a sort of time capsule," Fesler said. "When people had a well they were no longer going to use they had an excellent place to dump their garbage."

Moisture in the well can preserve articles like shoe leather that would disintegrate in nor mal earth, he added.

The trust is being encouraged - and partially funded - by Yorktown Water Street Revitalization Co., a group of investors that plans to begin building on the land this year. Their property is bounded by Buckner, Ballard, Main and Water streets.

The trust's archaeologists and volunteers will excavate other portions of the company's property and then ask to dig elsewhere in Yorktown, Luccketti said.

"I've worked sites where the bulldozer engines are running and the foreman is telling us we have an hour to finish our work," Fesler said.

"This development group has given us enough time to do the work and do it well."